Having just completed a 4-day, 800-mile loop from Washington, DC to Chenango Co, NY and back westward below the Finger Lakes and home, your message resonated. I was captivated by the Pennsylvania and New York landscapes and particularly treasured the areas without freeways and housing developments. This is what is blighting the Northern Virginia and Maryland suburban Washignton and Baltimore counties that just 30 years ago duplicated what you remembered from days of yore. Where farms and fields were framed by beautiful woodlands, now there are housing tracts, strip malls and clogged roads. This is happening around most large cities country-wide; the result of over population and the rest of "there's no tomorrow" blindness. Be thankful that what you are witnessing is a natural evolution and not human-generated degredation of our countrside which is irreversable. I can't wait to get back up into your beautiful area which must be ablaze with fall color right now. Quentin Cabell Smith